Interpol: Suspected pedophile found by police

PARIS, France (AP) -- A suspected pedophile targeted in an international manhunt was detained Thursday by police in the United States, Interpol announced.

The arrest was made two days after Interpol, the international police agency based in Lyon, France, appealed for public help to track down the man.

Interpol said the man was detained in Union City, New Jersey. The police agency identified the suspect as Wayne Nelson Corliss, 57.

Interpol said the man was suspected of sexually abusing at least three young boys from Southeast Asia. It said that photos seized by police in Norway in 2006 showed the man's alleged abuse.

Interpol said the boys were thought to have been as young as 6 to 10 years old.

The agency had appealed for public help because two years of police investigations had failed to determine the man's identity, nationality and whereabouts. Interpol said it feared that the man's alleged abuse of children could continue if he was not caught.

Interpol had said Wednesday that its appeal produced more than 200 leads -- potential names, locations and photos of the suspect -- in the first 24 hours.

It was only the second time that Interpol had launched such a public manhunt for a suspected pedophile.

The first time, last October, also rapidly led to an arrest, by police in Thailand, of a 32-year-old teacher from Canada, Christopher Paul Neil.

In that case, Neil's face had originally been disguised in Internet photos with a digital swirl. Police reversed the swirl process, unmasking his face, and Interpol released those cleaned-up images publicly. Neil went on trial in March, accused of sexually abusing a nine-year-old boy.

The suspect in the latest case did not appear to make any effort to hide his identity in the photos that were seized in Norway on the computer hard drive of a man later convicted of child sex offenses, Interpol officials said.

Interpol on Tuesday had released six photos of the suspect publicly as part of its appeal for help. They showed a gray-haired white man wearing glasses or lying on a checkered mattress or blanket in a yellow plaid shirt.

Other photos seen by The Associated Press, not among those made public, appeared to show the man engaged in sexual acts with boys.

Because of the lack of basic information about the man, Interpol officials had previously been simply calling the suspect "Mr. IDent" -- shortened from the word identity.

Interpol officials said they did not know why the man did not attempt to disguise his face in photos that showed alleged abuse. But officials noted that pedophile offenders sometimes reveal their identities to win trust in child-sex offender circles, in hopes of getting access to other children or images.

A computerized Interpol database of child abuse images played a part in the hunt for the man.

The first photos seized in Norway and others received in the two years since were run through the database of more than 520,000 images. It compared the photos with others, looking for matches.

In all, the database and police investigations helped turn up a total of around 800 images, including nearly 100 of the man himself and others of his suspected victims or places where he is thought to have committed his alleged crimes, Interpol said.

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